To be a transgender person in the UK over the past two weeks has been to wake up daily to discussions on how your life must be made smaller. The supreme court ruled on 16 April that references to a person’s sex in the Equality Act 2010 should be interpreted as referring only to “biological sex”. Since then, we have learned through a drip-drip of interviews and late-night website updates what the practical impacts of this verdict are likely to be.
The equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson, was one of the first to speak for the government, telling parliament that Labour would “offer trans people the dignity that too often they were denied” under previous administrations. A head-spinning claim, given that she had warmed up by telling Good Morning Britain a transgender woman in a pub with a full bladder should use the men’s loo.
